King Alfred of England, Jacob Abbott [ebook audio reader TXT] 📗

at the successive periods of time denoted by their burning.

As each of these candles was one foot long, and burned three inches in an hour, it follows that it would last four hours; when this time was expired, the attendant who had the apparatus in charge lighted another. There were, of course, six required for the whole twenty-four hours. The system worked very well, though there was one difficulty that occasioned some trouble in the outset, which, however, was not much to be regretted after all, since the remedying of it awakened the royal ingenuity anew, and led, in the end, to adding to Alfred's other glories the honor of being the inventor of _lanterns_!

The difficulty was, that the wind, which came in very freely in those days, even in royal residences, through the open windows, blew the flames of these horological candles about, so as to interfere quite seriously with the regularity of their burning. There was no glass for windows in those days, or, at least, very little. It had been introduced, it is said, in one instance, and that was in a monastery in the north of England. The abbot, whose name was Benedict, brought over some workmen from the Continent, where the art of making glass windows had been invented, and caused them to glaze some windows in his monastery. It was many years after this before glass came into general use even in churches, and palaces, and other costly buildings of that kind. In the mean time, windows were mere openings in stone walls, which could be closed only by shutters; and inasmuch as when closed they excluded the light as well as the air, they could ordinarily be shut only on one side of the apartment at a time--the side most exposed to the winds and storms.

Alfred accordingly found that the flame of his candles was blown by the wind, which made the wax burn irregularly; and, to remedy the evil, he contrived the plan of protecting them by thin plates of horn. Horn, when softened by hot water, can easily be cut and fashioned into any shape, and, when very thin, is almost transparent. Alfred had these thin plates of horn prepared, and set into the sides of a box made open to receive them, thus forming a rude sort of lantern, within which the time-keeping candles could burn in peace. Mankind have consequently given to King Alfred the credit of having invented lanterns.

Having thus completed his apparatus for the correct measurement of time, Alfred was enabled to be more and more systematic in the division and employment of it. One of the historians of the day relates that his plan was to give one third of the twenty-four hours to sleep and refreshment, one third to business, and the remaining third to the duties of religion. Under this last head was probably included all those duties and pursuits which, by the customs of the day, were considered as pertaining to the Church, such as study, writing, and the consideration and management of ecclesiastical affairs. These duties were performed, in those days, almost always by clerical men, and in the retirement and seclusion of monasteries, and were thus regarded as in some sense religious duties. We must conclude that Alfred classed them thus, as he was a great student and writer all his days, and there is no other place than this third head to which the duties of this nature can be assigned. Thus understood, it was a very wise and sensible division; though eight hours daily for any long period of time, appropriated to services strictly devotional, would not seem to be a wise arrangement, especially for a man in the prime of life, and in a position demanding the constant exercise of his powers in the discharge of active duties.

Thus the years of Alfred's life passed away, his kingdom advancing steadily all the time in good government, wealth, and prosperity. The country was not, however, yet freed entirely from the calamities and troubles arising from the hostility of the Danes. Disorders continually broke out among those who had settled in the land, and, in some instances, new hordes of invaders came in. These were, however, in most instances, easily subdued, and Alfred went on with comparatively little interruption for many years, in prosecuting the arts and improvements of peace. At last, however, toward the close of his life, a famous Northman leader, named Hastings, landed in England at the head of a large force, and made, before he was expelled, a great deal of trouble. An account of this invasion will be given in the next chapter.


CHAPTER XII.

THE CLOSE OF LIFE.


It was twelve or fifteen years after Alfred's restoration to his kingdom, by means of the victory at Edendune, that the great invasion of Hastings occurred. That victory took place in the year 878. It was in the years 893-897 that Hastings and his horde of followers infested the island, and in 900 Alfred died, so that his reign ended, as it had commenced, with protracted and desperate conflicts with the Danes.

Hastings was an old and successful soldier before he came to England. He had led a wild life for many years as a sea king on the German Ocean, performing deeds which in our day entail upon the perpetrator of them the infamy of piracy and murder, but which then entitled the hero of them to a very wide-spread and honorable fame. Afterward Hastings landed upon the Continent, and pursued, for a long time, a glorious career of victory and plunder in France. In these enterprises, the tide, indeed, sometimes turned against him. On one occasion, for instance, he found himself obliged to give way before his enemies, and he retreated to a church, which he seized and fortified, making it his castle until a more favorable aspect of his affairs enabled him to issue forth from this retreat and take the field again. Still he was generally very successful in his enterprises; his terrible ferocity, and that of his savage followers, were dreaded in every part of the civilized world.

Hastings had made one previous invasion of England; but Guthrum, faithful to his covenants with Alfred, repulsed him. But Guthrum was now dead, and Alfred had to contend against his formidable enemy alone.

Hastings selected a point on the southern coast of England for his landing. Guthrum's Danes still continued to occupy the eastern part of England, and Hastings went round on the southern coast until he got beyond their boundaries, as if he wished to avoid doing any thing directly to awaken their hostility. Guthrum himself, while he lived, had evinced a determination to oppose Hastings's plans of invasion. Hastings did not know, now that Guthrum was dead, whether his successors would oppose him or not. He determined, at all events, to respect their territory, and so he passed along on the southern shore of England till he was beyond their limits, and then prepared to land.

[Illustration: HASTINGS BESIEGED IN THE CHURCH.]

He had assembled a large force of his own, and he was joined, in addition to them, by many adventurers who came out to attach themselves to his expedition from the bays, and islands, and harbors which he passed on his way. His fleet amounted at least to two hundred and fifty vessels. They arrived, at length, at a part of the coast where there extends a vast tract of low and swampy land, which was then a wild and dismal morass. This tract, which is known in modern times by the name of the Romney Marshes, is of enormous extent, containing, as it does, fifty thousand acres. It is now reclaimed, and is defended by a broad and well-constructed dike from the inroads of the sea. In Hastings's time it was a vast waste of bogs and mire, utterly impassable except by means of a river, which, meandering sluggishly through the tangled wilderness of weeds and bushes in a deep, black stream, found an outlet at last into the sea.

Hastings took his vessels into this river, and, following its turnings for some miles, he conducted them at last to a place where he found more solid ground to land upon. But this ground, though solid, was almost as wild and solitary as the morass. It was a forest of vast extent, which showed no signs of human occupancy, except that the peasants who lived in the surrounding regions had come down to the lowest point accessible, and were building a rude fortification there. Hastings attacked them and drove them away. Then, advancing a little further, until he found an advantageous position, he built a strong fortress himself and established his army within its lines.

His next measure was to land another force near the mouth of the Thames, and bring them into the country, until he found a strong position where he could intrench and fortify the second division as he had done the first. These two positions were but a short distance from each other. He made them the combined center of his operations, going from them in all directions in plundering excursions. Alfred soon raised an army and advanced to attack him; and these operations were the commencement of a long and tedious war.

A detailed description of the events of this war, the marches and countermarches, the battles and sieges, the various success, first of one party and then of the other, given historically in the order of time, would be as tedious to read as the war itself was to endure. Alfred was very cautious in all his operations, preferring rather to trust to the plan of wearing out the enemy by cutting off their resources and hemming them constantly in, than to incur the risk of great decisive battles. In fact, watchfulness, caution, and delay are generally the policy of the invaded when a powerful force has succeeded in establishing itself among them; while, on the other hand, the hope of _invaders_ lies ordinarily in prompt and decided action. Alfred was well aware of this, and made all his arrangements with a view to cutting off Hastings's supplies, shutting him up into as narrow a compass as possible, heading him off in all his predatory excursions, intercepting all detachments, and thus reducing him at length to the necessity of surrender.

At one time, soon after the war began, Hastings, true to the character of his nation for treachery and stratagem, pretended that he was ready to surrender, and opened a negotiation for this purpose. He agreed to leave the kingdom if Alfred would allow him to depart peaceably, and also, which was a point of great importance in Alfred's estimation, to have his two sons baptized. While, however, these negotiations were going on between the two camps, Alfred suddenly found that the main body of Hastings's army had stolen away in the rear, and were marching off by stealth to another part of the country. The negotiations were, of course, immediately abandoned, and Alfred set off with all his forces in full pursuit. All hopes of peace were given up, and the usual series of sieges, maneuverings, battles, and retreats was resumed again.

On one occasion Alfred succeeded in taking possession of Hastings's camp, when he had left it in security, as he supposed, to go off for a time by sea on an expedition. Alfred's soldiers found Hastings's wife and children in the camp, and took them prisoners. They sent the terrified captives to Alfred, to suffer, as they supposed, the long and cruel confinement or the violent death to which the usages of those days consigned such unhappy prisoners. Alfred baptized the children, and then sent them, with their mother, loaded with presents and proofs of